Published 4:00 am, Sunday, June 4, 1995

The kind of records Lenny Waronker made as a producer very much determined his later style as president of Warner Bros. Records.

When the highly regarded 53-year-old executive announced his resignation last year after a corporate shakeup that also sent packing his longtime colleague and mentor, chairman Mo Ostin, it sent shock waves through the record business. In an avaricious, competitive industry where love is seldom lost over the departure of label chiefs, Waronker and Ostin were the exceptions -- beloved, respected record men who built the world's most successful record company on a belief in artistry and quality.

Warner Bros.' recent re-release on compact disc of three early, key Waronker productions vividly demonstrates exactly why he was so unlike other record company bosses. The debut albums by songwriter Randy Newman and slide guitarist Ry Cooder and the country-rock reinvention of the Everly Brothers, "Roots," were never successful at the time of their release, but over the years, each garnered a growing reputation as a gleaming showcase of remarkable talent.

"Obviously those are records I'm incredibly proud of," Waronker said. "I always felt that those records are like little films that have lasted for years. Maybe they have never been particularly successful, but they are the real thing. When you're dealing with artistry like that -- and maybe this has something to do with how I think -- you can't really go wrong . . . I have always been dedicated to quality and understanding the artist and the artistic vision. Those really are the most important issues, as opposed to sales. And Warner Bros. certainly was about that -- a company really dedicated to artists -- and it wasn't just talk."

Given that under Waronker's guidance the label stuck for the better part of 20 years with artists like Newman, Cooder and Bonnie Raitt despite modest marketplace success, these are not platitudes.

Waronker grew up in the business. His father founded Liberty Records in 1955 and built a successful company on torchy pop records with suggestive album covers by Julie London and rock and roll hits by Eddie Cochran, Patience and Prudence and others. His father, Simon (Si) Waronker, in fact, was immortalized in one of the names chosen for Liberty's successful novelty act, the Chipmunks.

Waronker started at Warners with the mission of making Top 40 hits for a label almost entirely absent from that lucrative field, and he struck paydirt shortly thereafter with Harper's Bizarre ("Feelin' Groovy") and the Mojo Men ("Sit Down, I Think I Love You," written by the young Stephen Stills). But with the 1968 album "Song Cycle" -- his groundbreaking work with the brilliant, eccentric Van Dyke Parks, who co- wrote with Brian Wilson the quirky "Heroes and Villians" for the Beach Boys -- Waronker changed his direction.

"The '60s were an odd time," he said. "Anything that you could do that was inventive or interesting was OK. Any time you followed the rules, you didn't feel cool."

Mo Ostin encouraged him to record songwriter Randy Newman, Waronker's closest friend since childhood. He brought Parks to the project as co-producer. More than a quarter-century later, the album is still a breathtaking marvel of whimsy and melodiousness, with lush, delicate orchestrations supporting Newman's trademark blend of irony and facetiousness.

The release of this 1968 masterpiece went unnoticed by the public, even when the record company, in advertisements in early issues of Rolling Stone magazine, offered to give away copies to anyone who wrote and asked for one.

"I don't know if it was conscious," said Waronker, "but it was tucked away in all our brains that using an orchestra would be a scary and wonderful way to enter the scene. We were going to challenge the backbeat. There was a rock and roll mentality to it, but it certainly didn't sound anything like that. It was "screw 'em all -- we're not going to have anything to do with the rules." Once you remove that from a record, you're out there by yourself."

When Waronker crossed paths with the Everly Brothers, the '50s rock and rollers had run out their string of hits. "They were having a difficult time," he said. "They hadn't had a real record in a long time. There was difficulty finding material. They were at odds as to what they wanted to do. "

Waronker set about assembling a selection of songs by such writers as the then-little-known Merle Haggard, Newman and Ron Elliott of the Beau Brummels, and fashioning behind the Everlys a modern country-rock sound that presaged the fascination with this hybrid by other West Coast bands like the Byrds and Poco.

Intertwining pieces of the old Everly family radio show, featuring Don and Phil Everly as children, Waronker stitched together an autobiographical album that remains one of the finest moments in the long and illustrious recording career of the great singing duo. "It was made piecemeal," he said, "and, to a large extent, when they were gone. They had their doubts, but when they did hear it, they did like it."

When Waronker met guitarist Ry Cooder during the Everlys sessions, he had never heard anyone play bottleneck guitar before. "He was an amazing character -- you knew that when he walked in the room," Waronker said. "But when I heard him play, I said 'Forget about the Everly Brothers, let's do that.' It seemed like a great thing to mess around with. You could tell this guy was so special."

Cooder's 1970 debut album would serve as a basic blueprint for his solo Warners recordings over the next 25 years, save for his excursions in musicology. The slashing slide, funky rhythm drive and gnarly vocals on "Alimony," the song that opens the album, boldly announced a towering new talent who continues to fulfill that promise all these years later.

During his years as a Warner Bros. producer, Waronker worked with an extraordinary array of artists -- Paul Simon, James Taylor, Ricki Lee Jones, Maria Muldaur, Gordon Lightfoot -- but these three keystone albums defined, even at that early stage, the principle that guided his Warner Bros. career -- a genuine commitment to artistry and quality.&lt;mw&gt;